2 days ago

3 days ago

Since Fractured Identity is not in Nekusar's colour identity, I presume you are using a different commander? Since I did not know which colours you would be running, I did not limit my search by colour.

Abundance is prevents damage by having players receive cards without ever drawing them.

Island Sanctuary does not give players card advantage, but it gives them the option of forgoing their draws for a slight boon.

5 days ago

W3R3PLATYPUS, after looking into some common Mill decks, as well as the decks listed above by Suns_Champion, I think I have an initial recommendation. This comes from the basic premise of this deck, take what they do best, that thing that creates the excess that the deck uses to win, and punish them for it. Unfortunately, I don't yet have a way of doing that suddenly and surprisingly, but that may not matter.

First, it seems like the best Mill decks are actually just combo decks. They set up a situation where a few cards played will Mill the opponent's entire deck, usually utilizing a few key permanents to create a Mill engine that can be made infinite. Many do not have much else for wincons, and basically depend on some amount of overlapping combos. There are a few deck types that use Mill as a secondary win, but many of those are already susceptible to the weapons of this deck, so they are not really as much of a problem. Our pillow fort, our Aikido wins against go wide strategies, and our control should all keep those decks off balance enough already. It seems like the Mill decks that will be the biggest problem are decks that basically ignore the opponent until the wincon combo is assembled. These make our pillow fort mostly useless. They typically utilize some infinite combo for mana by dropping creatures in an infinite loop. This suggests a way to combat them.

First, I don't think that typical Mill protection is really worthwhile. You could play an Eldrazi titan, but it would not otherwise be useful. Cards like Feldon's Cane are a finite solution to what is often an infinite problem, and can't reliably protect you. I suggest that you don't go after either of these strategies.

When facing a dedicated Mill deck, go aggressive. When a deck does best by ignoring the opponent, keep them from ignoring you. Attack. Put the pressure on. Race them to the win. This deck has some speed, so use it. Be proactive. Aggressively remove combo pieces, both from the battlefield as well as out of the deck with Hide/Seek. Take out central combo pieces and hamstring them. Even if they have backup combos, make it harder to stumble into a combo. Try to get Solitary Confinement out to keep from being targeted. Without even changing things in the deck, you can change how you typically play, and and you can punish them for their typical game plan.

For changes to the list that are good options, changes that will make the deck good against more than just mill, I would suggest playing cards that punish creatures coming into play. Suture Priest, Trespasser's Curse, Rampaging Ferocidon are all powerful against many strategies, and with any of those out, you can basically shut down almost all of the Mill combos in the listed decks, as well as most of the mill strategies in many of the decks I looked at. The decks that could be created without a creature cycle typically use infinite mana for an large X spell. You could try Parallectric Feedback for these decks. Lastly, you could play Island Sanctuary to elect not to draw on your draw step. This could be used as a pillow fort card, but would also allow you to keep playing even with no cards in your deck.

In any case, I think that Mill is a pretty corner case strategy that is hard to make work very consistently, they are mostly non-interactive combo decks with an infinite Mill wincon, and going aggressive to put them on a short clock, playing some pillow fort that protects against Mill, being proactive about eliminating the combo pieces with your control, and adding a few cards that work on multiple strategies but that will kill their ability to go infinite, that should help take care of Mill.

Also Suns_Champion, I think that your losses potentially are a result of the fact that combo, especially Mill, is often stronger against a single opponent since they don't have to outrace multiple players all at once, and this deck is often weaker against a single opponent since there is no offense to piggyback before the non-damage wincon is dropped. This deck was never meant to play under these conditions. Going 2-3 in this situation with a deck that you had never played is actually surprisingly good. I am not discouraged by your performance at all. Nice work. Try adding another opponent or two and I bet the balance shifts dramatically.

6 days ago

Thanks for the input guys! Archetype of Imagination as Rwhr2d2 says, has a CMC too high for it to be in the deck as well as is very fragile to removal. For those two reasons I like Mystic Decree better; even then still isn't fetchable with Zur so probably won't make it to the deck. It's a shame because it looks like it was made to be paired with Island Sanctuary!

1 month ago

Island Sanctuary! A great pillow fort card of old, and you can find it on Tcgplayer for two quarters! :3 Im not at home right now but Ill take a closer look at the decklist and playtest it later so I can give good suggestions. Until then!

2 months ago

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